QUEK JIA QI
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Is this seat taken?

Is this seat taken? (2018)

 Public performance outside Whitney Museum, New York City, USA
We crave connection, but fear rejection. In a fast-paced city where a majority of social interactions take place via technology, the challenge today is how we can better coexist offline. Exploring the potential of public spaces to strengthen connections, the performance seeks to parse out the significance of individual within a community and break down the barrier that inhibits social interaction in everyday life: that of physical distance. The anticipated dis(comfort) that arises from an unfamiliar territory aims to reveal how our social dynamics operate in the public sphere - spurring on participants’ reflections of the complexities and contradictions that accompany notions of desire and intimacy.

The public performance involves the artist providing a service to connect strangers by rearranging the Whitney Chairs outside the Whitney Museum. The gesture invited strangers to sit together, move, break free from their personal headspace and start sharing a conversation with one another. 
The artist became an active figure of giving prompts and actively sorting different seating arrangements to encourage open human communication. 

  • ABOUT
  • WORK
    • RECENT WORKS
    • PUBLIC ART >
      • Can You Hear Me?
      • Kuti Kuti?
      • The Treehouse We Never Had
      • Waiting For
      • What do you not handle with care?
      • Shifting Concretes: Can We “Lepak” Better at Orchard Road?
      • 洗手 (Washing Hands)
    • INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS >
      • Stretch
      • Bind
      • Untitled (lost and maybe not always found)
      • Tree of Curiosities
      • Real-Doh Playroom
      • Real-Doh: Fun with Apologies
      • Real-Doh: Model Citizen
      • Real-Doh: Together, We Can Even This Out
      • 佳佳 Mama Shop
      • Fix-Aided
    • COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT >
      • Mapping with Sounds
      • A Picnic In Apart
      • Field Trip to Redhill
      • Kopi & Myths
      • Goodnight Stranger
      • Your Familiar Stranger
    • COLLABORATIONS >
      • Conversations in Singapore History' 18
      • Oceans*A*Part
      • Dumplings & Dialogue
      • And Everything In Between
      • The Little Things Book
    • PERFORMANCES >
      • Is this seat taken?
      • Ghost to Ourselves
      • All The Things I Had To Say To You (Without You)
      • Grieving in New York City
      • Love Clinic
  • PRESS
  • CONTACT